Trump to sign order to speed up infrastructure approvals

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Tuesday designed to streamline the approval process for building roads, bridges and other infrastructure by establishing “one federal decision’’ for major projects and setting a two-year goal for permitting.

The order will create accountability and discipline for the permitting process and will not require a change in law, said a person familiar with the matter. The process can sometimes involve approvals by multiple agencies and duplicative reviews, officials have said.

Trump is expected participate in an infrastructure discussion during his visit to Trump Tower in New York City with his team including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, the White House said.

Because the federal government owns less than 10% of U.S. infrastructure, the Trump administration has focused on efforts to accelerate environmental reviews and permitting for projects that can take years and create unpredictability for investors.

“This is the most boring thing we do but absolutely the most impactful thing,’’ DJ Gribbin, special assistant to the president for infrastructure policy, said during a June 23 appearance at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Florida.

The Trump administration has said it plans to release a legislative package by this fall to meet the president’s pledge to invest $1 trillion to upgrade U.S. infrastructure. The White House signaled it wants to allocate $200 billion in federal dollars over 10 years to pay for large-scale and rural projects and to induce states, localities and the private sector to spend $800 billion.

Previous order

Trump approved an earlier executive order just four days after taking office to expedite environmental reviews and approvals for high-priority infrastructure projects, and White House officials in March convened a working group of federal agencies to identify policies, regulations and statutes that hinder project approvals.

The president also announced on June 9 during the White House’s “infrastructure week’’ that he was creating a council that already exists, the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council. It was authorized by Congress in 2015 and implemented by President Barack Obama. The council is not meeting its potential, the White House said at the time.

The Business Roundtable sent Cohn a letter on April 7 reiterating that “existing law already provides a mechanism for comprehensive reform” of the permitting process for major projects. Critics say that while existing procedures can be streamlined, most delays are caused by the need for state and local approvals and other factors including available funding.

A fact sheet the administration released with its budget on May 23 calls for designating a single federal entity to shepherd each project through the review and permitting process instead of navigating multiple agencies, as well as shifting infrastructure permitting to state and local officials where appropriate.

That’s particularly important for private-sector investors, who have capital available but lack enough projects and certainty about deals, Chao has said.

Democrats have urged the administration to focus on the streamlining provisions that have already been approved but not yet fully implemented and said the problem is really a lack of direct federal spending for projects.

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